Category: Lifestyle

I believe firmly in biblical complementarianism, that is, that husbands are in authority over their wives and wives are called to submit to them in all things.

I think many, many workplaces are suited only for men, and that, despite having a great amount of respect for women who brave these jobs, things like the infantry (the military as a whole really), police force, and fire departments are no place for women.

I think that modern feminism is one of the worst things to happen to modern, Western society, but believe passionately, rather, in chivalry, that is, that society should uphold the value that men ought to protect, defend, and provide for women and children.

I think, whenever possible, the best thing for everyone in the family, mom included, is for her to be at home with the children, attending to the majority of her family’s needs herself.

Have I demonstrated my fundie street cred enough?

I hope so because if you’re as fundamentalist as I am, you might not like what I have to say next:

It’s perfectly fine for a woman to work and earn for her family.

(Cue the record scratch).

Legalistic Womanhood vs. Biblical Womanhood

A few years ago, I was very surprised to discover among fundamentalist complementarians like myself the attitude that it was wrong for women to work at all.

It didn’t surprise me that they thought women should be home with their children, putting their hearts and souls into being a Holy Spirit inspired helpmeet, after all, I felt the same way and still do.

It surprised me that, in the case of one extreme example, they literally argued against Scripture to defend their position that women shouldn’t earn money.

Proverbs 31, anyone?

I don’t need to share the time-honored passages from one of the most well-known examples of biblical womanhood, you all know it well.

And perhaps it’s dawning on you as I write this that…homegirl was a hustler.

She earned money, from multiple sources, and is often described as a savvy businesswoman and successful entrepreneur, rightly so.

The Truth About the Proverbs 31 Woman

The thing about the Proverbs 31 woman is that, well, she saw well to the ways of her household.

She organized her life so that her career did not interfere with her family and her household’s needs.

The simple truth of the Bible often has leaps and bounds over any stick-in-the-mud cultural Christian belief that plagues the deepest corners of fundamentalist social media.

We are taught a lie in the church that living a certain modern definition of a godly lifestyle, i.e. “housewife”, a woman who does not work to earn money and stays at home, is the same as being a “keeper at home” (Titus 2) or a godly wife.

Using Godly Discernment

Here’s the thing: the apostle Paul would not have told us that “all things are lawful, but not all things edify” if it wasn’t, well, true, and this is exactly what working for a woman is like.

Earning money for your family is perfectly lawful, but it might not always edify, as anyone who feels the same way I do about modern feminism can likely easy identify.

Women who are unable to truly give their all to their families because they’re absorbed in the career. Women who are more likely to submit to their boss than their husband. Women who wear the pants in the family because they’ve been raised to pursue a career, rather than cultivate a thriving marriage or raise a family.

Here’s the dirty little secret about some submission teachers (who shall remain nameless) who preach godly womanhood: they will encourage a woman to challenge her husband if he wants her to work.

First of all, we’ve already established, from Proverbs 31, that earning money is clearly an example of godly womanhood if she has seen well to the ways of her household.

Second of all, I think it takes a particularly rebellious mind to encourage a woman to challenge her husband’s idea of what’s best for their family when it’s not outright sin (and earning money isn’t a sin, otherwise, as again, the Proverbs 31 woman illustrates.)

Women who pontificate regularly on how godly it is to submit to their husbands to the exact thing they preach against when they encourage women to undermine their husband’s decision making when it comes to whether or not women can be breadwinners too.

If righteousness comes by forsaking employment for the sake of being a housewife, then Christ died in vain.

The Bottom Line

You can absolutely still submit to your husband and see to the ways of your household and work and earn a living.

I know this well, while I am blessed to work at home rather than outside the home. In fact, I’m a better homemaker and more obedient wife (well, you’d have to ask my husband but I certainly think I am LOL) since I’ve been working, because it’s taught me the vital importance of, well, Proverbs 31 style home management.

Smart planning, daily routines and habits, and how to carefully wear many hats and spin many plates.

To me, when you look at the entire canon of Scripture, anyone who is hard-working, diligent, respectful of those in authority over them, and, most of all, who fears the Lord, is what makes a godly person.

After all, it’s not a woman who forsakes employment who is to be praised, but a woman who fears the Lord.

Perhaps, if you are a modern millennial-era human, you have been on the social media and seen a post or two about a certain health diet and how it is literally the healthiest way to eat.

Vegan, paleo, keto, all-fermented, Whole 30, etc., etc., etc.

If you are at all concerned about your health, you’ve probably watched videos or even researched these diets for yourself and thought “ohmygosh I need to be doing this diet.”

You plan out all the amazing healthy superfoods you’re going to eat, you buy sauerkraut and alternative milk or maybe some tofu and almond butter and just having them in your grocery bag on the way home makes you feel healthier and more vibrant.

But sooner or later, the crushing weight of your whole life, small children, husbands to feed, grocery money to budget, and the fact that gluten is delicious come crashing in on you and you either can’t stick with the diet or you never even start it in the first place, instead spending time daydreaming about the glorious, all-healing, superfood-packed, divinely revealed health diet you will go on.

One of these days…

OK, maybe this isn’t you, but this was definitely me, and for many years. The problem was, though, that while I had a good grasp of what constituted “healthy” foods and was aware of many different types of health diets, I was confused and overwhelmed as to how to apply these to my life.

I constantly see a lot of these misperceptions about health and diet out there and, as Biblical Christians, I think it’s important to take a step back, a deep breath, and think about diet and nutrition with a little more Grace and plain practicality.

Here’s what was wrong with how I was thinking, and what I have learned over the past year:

We Live in a Fallen World

Bam, bingo, jackpot, this is it–the reason for so many of life’s problems. Ok, actually, literally all of life’s problems, if you have a Biblical worldview.

We gain weight, get bad skin, get eczema, asthma, hormone imbalances, cancer, or any sickness, not to mention die because we live in a fallen world affected by sin.

Our bodies, like the food we eat, are beautiful, amazing creations, hand-designed and formed by the Creator God, Lord of the Universe. But all creation is fallen.

This means our bodies and our food sources are imperfect, which leads me to the most important bottom line we all need to face when it comes to health and diet: there is no perfect diet.

I could end this blog post right here, of course, but next comes the best part:

There Are Many Different Ways to “Eat Right”

See, the quest for the perfect diet is just like the quest for the perfect life in general. It all boils down to the beautiful dichotomy of Christian life: we will always be imperfect in these mortal bodies, and yet we are constantly and consistently perfected in Christ.

In the same way, while we live in a fallen creation, it is a beautiful creation and the fingerprints of God’s perfect design is still everywhere.

There are so many wonderful foods out there that are so nourishing and healing for our bodies, and we as humans made in God’s image are capable of discovering details about and utilizing the wonders of creation to heal and improve (to a point) our bodies.

There’s a lot of conflicting information out there about which diet is “best” but the truth is, which diet is right for you is a lot like a post-Cross Christian walk as well:

We Are All Unique

We are all individuals, and just as our walk with the Lord will look different from someone else’s, our own personal relationship with food and the types of foods that are healing and beneficial for our bodies is going to change person to person.

This can be very technical: you might not be able to tolerate a type of food that is incredibly beneficial to someone else’s health, or any overall type of eating, macro balance, or way of dividing up portion sizes might be either really beneficial for you or not.

However, the formation good habits and developing the self-control necessary to change something as important as the way we eat every day is very psychological and spiritual, so you need to take more into account than simply “eating healthy foods.” There’s a very simple physical reason for this as well:

Physics Still Applies

At the end of the day, when it comes to weight loss at least, we tend to view “healthy foods” as foods that “help you lose weight”, but in reality, and technically, according to tried and tested scientific research, losing and gaining weight comes down to calories. God created a world with certain rules to how physical matter behaves, and this can be applied to weight loss.

There is no one food that “makes” you gain or lose weight any faster or slower than any other food, there are only foods that have either more or less calories, and the amount of overall calories you have in your body dictates how much mass you will put on or lose.

That said, again, there are many ways to eat less calories if you want to lose weight, some much, much, much better than others, but what works for you will still not necessarily be what works for someone else and–this is a big one–won’t necessarily be what someone else deems “healthy”.

There can be a bit of witch-hunt mentality when it comes to certain foods like gluten, grains, dairy, meat, even sugar, but if you’re trying to find a sustainable and healthy way to eat and can’t seem to shake a certain habit, you might do much better overall by allowing yourself to keep eating that type of food. Or not. Perhaps cutting all problem foods out together will be what works best for you! Clearly, I can’t stress enough how different each individual will be.

Which leads me to my next point:

Don’t Be a Health Pharisee

Let’s face it: one of the reasons we get sucked into the appeal of different health diets is that the people sharing them believe they are the only good diet. This is by no means a rule and I know plenty of people who eat in a certain style who totally understand that it’s what’s worked for them and that other people might find something else to be effective.

When something works for you, it’s very easy to fall into the trap of thinking it’s the only thing that will work for everyone, or, on the flipside, if we’re too legalistic with ourselves about the way we eat, we can throw our hands up and forsake all healthy eating because it seems way too hard.

This definitely happened to me far too often before I found my health diet groove.

The Pharisee mentality is thinking that there is a point of perfection when it comes to our works, and that includes the way we eat.

Again, there are many, many ways to be healthy, but no one perfect way to eat. In the same way a Christian woman feels called to be modest and won’t wear miniskirts or bikinis, but an adherent to works-based Islam might cover herself in a burka and rarely leave her house, you can cut bad foods out of your life for good reasons or you might start making your own law about different kinds of foods.

As with anything, let the Holy Spirit guide you and cast aside expectations of perfection, striving for Christian sanctification instead. You definitely can’t do it by your own power, so turn to Him instead so that when you make changes, you know it’s for your own good rather than you trying to be good, if that makes sense.

I’ll write more on this soon, but the way of eating that ended up being successful for me was flexible dieting, which doesn’t restrict any one food but only tracks calories and macros. Again I’ll expand more on why this worked for me spiritually, psychologically, and physiologically, but what strikes me the most about this manner of eating is how much it mirrors my walk.

I needed to learn that I will never be perfect, but with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, I can constantly be perfected in Christ, and develop the right balance of self-discipline and grace to achieve my fitness and health goals.

My diet is very far from perfect, just like me. But I can now confidently say it is healthy. It might not be how you eat and a lot of health snobs would turn their nose up on the snack I had while writing this, but I feel fully confident knowing I’m fully covered in His love and grace, doing the best I can in the time on this earth to display fruits of His spirit and make the most of this mortal body.

Since I am introducing this blog as a fresh new blog, I thought I would take a few minutes to explain exactly what it’s about.

In short, it’s about me, and my views, and my life, and the passionate love I have for Jesus and the Word of God and how it tells us we should live our lives, and the direction it tells us the world is going.

The End Times

Ok, so yeah, obviously I created this blog with the presupposition that we are in the end times, and I still believe this. I don’t know exactly when “IT” will happen, I don’t know exactly how much prophecy has been fulfilled, I do however know what hasn’t been fulfilled yet. I also know, most important of all, that Jesus told His believers 2,000 years ago to be prepared for the Day of the Lord so that I shall do.

I’m definitely interested in self-reliance, survivalism, and end times prophecy, but the end times have come to mean something much more internally spiritual over the last few years. Namely, the spiritual state of always being prepared for His return. The Christian walk is all-or-nothing, so you’re either ready to meet Jesus and keeping oil in your lamp for His return, or you’re not. Plain and simple.

These days can be very scary to be a parent, and when I first had babies, I was constantly worried about what would happen to them if we went through the great tribulation in our lifetime.

The truth is, it is possible at any point in time to go through tribulation, and many mothers since the history of time have had to watch their children suffer and even die. Abraham typifies the ultimate spiritual sacrifice we must make in his willingness to sacrifice Isaac to God–knowing full well God would still fulfill His promise that Abraham’s seed would be bountiful through Isaac. A lot of people miss the point of that story.

We need to trust the Lord’s promises to us and to our children. A few years ago, He spoke to me that no matter what, He would keep me and my children, and that nothing physical could compare to the glory He would reveal to us.

The Calling of Homemaking

That being said, the daily grind of Christian parenting often involves much more temporal challenges than the crippling existential fear of facing the end times as parents. Haha.

Because I am a very ideological Christian and former feminist and leftist, I feel very strongly that parenting, marriage, and homemaking are all Biblical callings that we must address as such. Motherhood, homemaking, and being a wife are not oppressive, they are wonderful and fulfilling ways to participate in the Body of Christ. They are also incredibly functional roles to play in a thriving society, and we have seen our society suffer immensely as women try to fill the role of men in society while expecting no change to their cherished status as the nurturers and caretakers of society.

Sorry, there I go getting super heady again. More on that in many future blogs.

My point is that learning how to keep house, raise children, have a thriving marriage, and, basically, manage modern adulting (which, let’s face it, is hard even when you’re single) is hard. Dang hard. I’m pretty passionate about household management because I’m an avid student of it. So, this is definitely going to be your average mom blog as well, in the context, however, that housewifery is an incredibly vital part of being a Christian woman and mother.

Conservative Philosophy and Politics

My number one philosophical dedication is to the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Word of God contained in the pages of the Holy Bible. That being said, gosh darnit I’m an American Christian and I wholeheartedly believe that while outrageously imperfect, our country was founded on the unique belief that our rights and value come from God, and not from the government.

Given I believe that absolute morality is defined by God Himself and not the government, I do appreciate living in the United States and feel pretty passionately about the Constitution being upheld. At times a hobby, at times a source of righteous anger and indignation, politics, the culture war, and feuding ideologies fascinate me, and, granted I’m a writer, evoke many passionately expressed words. I am a proud conservative Constitutionalist and not afraid to say so.

So in short, I’ll definitely be ranting about politics here as well, and possibly working on some news-in-five-minutes type content for busy moms on either Facebook or Instagram.

Homeschool

I almost posted this without including my passion for homeschool. I am a six-day-creationist, Bible-literalist, gun-totin’, liberty-loving American Christian, I do happen to homeschool and that is a huge part of my life.

I also (remember, I said this would be an average mom blog!) love to make printables for my homeschool and will be sharing many details of the journey I am on to home educate my children and raise them up in the proverbial way they should go.

Health and Fitness

And finally, my third passion that I hope to address on this blog is that of health and fitness. The gym is my happy place, and I’ve grown increasingly interested in weight management and fitness nutrition this year.

Coming from the background of being, ok, a total hippie for basically all of my life, I am really excited to share more about fitness nutrition from a holistic, real-food-based standpoint, since I am very opposed to processed foods and have lots to say about modern food production and the obesity epidemic in our country and how it’s basically been designed to destroy….OK I won’t get super heady again. You get the point. I can pontificate on all that later.

So, there you have it. My new blog plan for the reborn End Times Mama. Faith, commentary, and lifestyle. Now let’s see if I can pull off the crazy fusion of ranting conservative moralist, home organization fanatic, and annoying fitness buff all in one.